Conjoined Twin Girls Successfully Separated at Kentucky Hospital

— -- Conjoined twins who were separated at a Kentucky hospital are getting stronger every day, hospital officials said.

Specialists at Kosair Children’s Hospital in Louisville performed the surgery on Nov. 11 to separate 7-week-old girls who were conjoined at the chest and abdominal cavity, the hospital said in a statement

The babies remain on ventilators and are under close watch at the hospital’s “Just for Kids” Critical Care Center, and though the hospital said they are currently unsure of the twins’ long-term prognosis, “indicators are favorable for continued improvement.”

“In any situation where you have so complex a surgery, there is always a long road to recovery,” Dr. Erle H. Austin III, chief of cardiovascular surgery at Kosair Children’s Hospital, said in a statement issued by the hospital. “We are cautiously optimistic, as one or both may require additional surgeries in the future.”

The twins, who shared some of the same heart structures and had joined livers, started to need increased breathing support and were not growing as they should, which is what prompted the “risky” surgery, hospital officials said, noting that the surgery was expected to last 12 hours but was completed in eight.

“God was definitely watching over the girls and the medical team on the day of the surgery,” the babies’ mother said in a statement. “We are so thankful to God and everyone at Kosair Children’s Hospital for getting them this far. We are also thankful to the hospital chaplain, who prayed with us before the delivery and the day of the surgery.”

The last surgery of its kind performed at this hospital was in 2001 when twins who were joined at the heart didn’t survive -- one didn’t make it through surgery and the second died months later, the hospital said.

According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, conjoined twins occur once in every 200,000 live births and the survival rate is between 5 and 25 percent.